I made a mistake in the newspaper.

Next to an article on two brothers, I published a photo of the one.  His brother’s name was the caption.

I was the village idiot for a week.

It hit me like a fish in the face.  Repeatedly.

My reaction?

Few things are as permanent as ink on paper.  Maybe death and taxes.

The problem is permanent.  Even if you scrub the mistake from your copy of the paper with spirits, the fact remains that your neighbour’s copy of the paper still contains your mistake.  The same goes for the thousands of copies on hundreds of shelves all over the city.

Shall I position my self on the train track

before or after I have taken a handful of pills?

Removing yourself from society is not an option.  Deadline is around the corner and your content is needed.

Jokes aside, I’d like to discuss a more serious issue.

I’m in the middle of a war zone called the media.

And no, I’m not referring to the whole Hlaudi censoring debate.

I’m still trying to deal with the online revolution and what it has done to journalism.

The digital revolution entails the transition from mechanical and analogue to digital technology. Records are being kept digitally and physically tangible, written work replaced with that which is done on computers.   The arrival of the internet in 1991 changed everything.  Initially, the change from letter writing to sending emails was a huge thing.

The arrival of social media changed our means of communication.  People don’t tackle issues face to face.  Their online alteregos do the dirty work.  In the online realm, things happen in seconds.

The daily or weekly deadlines of newspapers have become almost archaic.

Because of this:

• Readers expect newspapers and journalists to report directly from the scene.  News reports are uploaded to newspapers’ web sites and distributed via social-media platforms.
• If it’s not instant news, it’s old news.
• To confirm allegations often takes 48 hours or longer.
• Journalists now write fresh news reports, followed my information snippets as they become available.  Info is published as “current reports” or “allegations to be confirmed” in the name of being the first publication to get whatever happens, online.
• The urgency that online news reporting requires sometimes compromises the quality journalism that comes with a report that has been researched for, well, more than a few minutes.
• A vast amount of information circulates on social media, of which a substantial portion is defamatory.  Over and above the traditional duties of journalists, they are now expected to watch online news feeds like hawks and to sift through the rubble to find bits and pieces of truth.

In the middle of the war zone?

As a law graduate specialising in online defamation who works as a journalist, the judicial and ethical debates in my mind are never-ending. I like rules.  When a story enters the world, the persons mentioned in it must be protected by the law.  That does not always happen, because the law that protects the objects of journalists’ stories, is often vague and confusing to those who did not study law.

The regulations that do exist were written in pompous language.  Where people from the media industry explain it to journalists, they often hear a biased, filtered version of the law and the impression is created that freedom of expression is somehow elevated above the other fundamental rights guaranteed in our Constitution.

When some legal gurus explain the law to journalists, they might as well have wrapped them in a latin scroll.

If it is your job to bring “the truth” to light and “find the story,”, you will tend to move the vague regulations aside and focus on your job.  Humans focus on what they know.  If nobody taught you what you may not do, you’ll probably cause damage by publishing unlawful content.

Research conducted by the University of Witwatersrand described the media’s approach to online reporting as a work in progress and acknowledged that it was at times inaccurate and lacking.

The status quo is not one that I can live with.  I need a clear, non-biased, comprehensible guideline stating what the law says I may and may not do.  Yes, I acknowledge and appreciate the Press Code, but what does the law say?  Where are the lines drawn where online conduct is concerned?

I do not advocate statutory regulation, but the fact is that a number of laws and common law regulate the press and renders us potentially liable for our actions in civil and labour courts, the equality court and even – even if it is unlikely, it is possible – criminal courts.

Someone might become the guy the court makes an example of regarding what’s acceptable and what is not.  I don’t want to be that guy.

That is why I’ve been doing research on the sufficiency of South Africa’s defamation law in a constitutional, online age since December last year.  It’s a mouthful, but I hope to get clarity.  Even if it’s just for my divided mind.

Being a reporter in 2016 is not easy.  It is risky and we have double duties – both print and online deserve our full attention.